Pages

31 May 2012

Hope your all doing well :) Today I have an untried polish for ye. This is Catrice Sing: Hey! dirty-lilah. This one never really caught my eye when I initially started hoarding collecting Catrice nail polish. It wasn't until I was checking swatches for other polishes that it popped up on my radar.

When I cut my nails I always paint them just to make sure they are straight :P So the last night when I cut a fair bit off I grabbed a polish and threw it on :D I have to say I love this colour! I have nothing like this in my little stash and to be honest it would be hard to accidentally buy a dupe of this.

I actually thought this was a grey polish in the bottle but it really does side towards lilac on the nail. In the bottle you can see a slight shimmer but that doesn't show too strongly on the nail which I really like. I love a good strong creme polish :D

I used three coats for these pictures but that was my fault. I rushed application and the first coat was still tacky when I moved on to the second which caused dragging to occur on some nails. I'm delighted I put this on when we had some sun in Ireland as it really looks amazing. A great polish for all seasons in my books. And for €2.79 you can't go wrong.

Are ye fans of this polish? Would you call it a grurple (grey/purple) or grilac (grey/lilac) ?

30 May 2012

Today's post was so hard to come up with. There are very few inspiring nail art ideas that are based on the sunshine already so I kept it simple :) Also this coincidentally goes along with Challenge 6 which I had a minor boo boo with :P

Challenge 7: Sunshine

Here is my sunshine gradient for today's challenge. I knew from the start that I wanted to use Catrice Birdy Reloaded for this challenge but I didn't want it to be just plain yellow. I'm quiet happy with the result although there are a few bald spots. I did this fairly quickly though so I've only myself to blame :P
I'm glad the sun was out for these pictures. I had loads taken during the evening and they looked really dull.

For this challenge I simply cut up a bit of sponge and painting on a stripe of Catrice Birdy reloaded. Then when all the nail were done I added another stripe of Nails inc Atomic on top and sponged that around the tips.

I think it look like a sunset here but this was taken in the evening so it wasn't as bright out.

Because I used a normal sponge it looks kind of bubbly up close but that doesn't bother me to much to be honest :) Now before ye think I've gone mental using Nails inc Atomic all the time I only have two orange nail polishes and the other one is quite sheer so I wasn't sure if it would work or not. I added on a layer of Essence quick dry topcoat to smooth down the slightly bumpy texture of the polish.

That's all there is to it :) This was a synch to remove by the way which was really handy for me as I'm running out of nail polish remover :P

29 May 2012

Hey all,
Today's guest post is by one of my favourite bloggers ever! I have followed her blog for ages and she really inspires me with her nail polish swatches, her perfect nail art and her kindness towards her readers and fellow bloggers. She is such a star for creating this post today and I can't wait to see what she has in store. Please welcome Theodora from Red hair and black nail polish

Hello, dear readers of Cuti-CLUE-les!I'm Theodora and I'll be taking over her blog for today! Thank you so much sweetie for letting me do a guest post for you!! It is so much fun :D So let's get started!I wanna show you a gorgeous magnetic polish in red. It's from Flormar and it sadly has no name, just a number : 05. With every bottle you buy, you get a free magnet in the package and this is how it looks:

Wanna know the best thing about Magnetic polishes?? Almost every single one is a 1-coater! I have about 8 magnetic polishes from Flormar and Essence and 7 of them are 1-coaters, that's so awesome :D The application is very smooth and easy .After applying the polish you quickly have to grab the magnet and hold it over the nail as close as possible. This step takes some practice, believe me! I ruined my first nail 4 times until I got it right =)) Hold it over the nail for about 10 seconds and then remove it. This is how it'll look afterwards:

In this picture there is no top coat and you can see it's not that shiny, but the stripes are very well pronounced! To get a more glossy look, I added 1 coat of TC and that's it!

So shiny! I love it :D But I bet it would look interesting in matte as well ;) I really hope you liked it, Cuti-CLUE-les, and of course all of you readers out there and thank you so much again for this opportunity!! Thanks for reading! ♥

That was amazing! Red is one of my favourite nail polish colours and that one really is amazing. It is so hard to find good magnetic polishes. Thank you so much for this post Theodora! I'm sure everyone will love it. Theodora and Kaki from Glitter Obsession are also doing a Summer challenge.. The details of which can be found HERE. This would be great for those who found the Purple crumpet fairy summer challenge to be a bit too long. Even those taking part in the PCFSC should take a look :)

As always if you like to guest post on my blog just email me at cuticlueless@gmail.com or tweet me @Cuti-CLUE-les

28 May 2012

I know everyone is fairly wary of buying online when it comes to cosmetics and even normal everyday products.
I've known about the Irish beauty site Beauty Emporium for quiet a while now. Here you can find an array of beauty items from some of the best known brands like Essie, OPI, China Glaze and Seche.If I can buy within Ireland I will. It's easier and they use the normal postal system so I don't have to worry about waiting around all day to get any packages. It is run by a lovely lady called Stephanie who is an absolute star!

There was free delivery available on the 21st and I was so tempted to buy something but I talked myself out of it. Then the next morning when I thought I was safe I checked twitter only to see that she had extended it for another day.....I gave in :P I decided that E.O.S lipbalms had to be mine. I settled for Lemon drop and Strawberry Sorbet ( one would be lonely in the package ;) ). I ordered them on the 22rd at around 8pm, it was sent out the next day and I recieved the package on the 24th! So quick!

Look at how well wrapped they are! They came in a bubble wrap envelope too. I though they would just come in the envelope as they are only lipbalm pots but no she goes the whole hog and ensured that they arrived safe and sound.

Here they are unwrapped. On the left is strawberry sorbet and on the right is lemon drop . Behind them is the beauty emporium business card which I think is a lovely idea. I like to be able to check the delivery prices of a company when I'm not online so this will come in handy.

(click to enlarge)

And lastly here is the official stamp :P This comes on the envelope and the invoice included in the delivery. Again it is another nice touch that not only highlights the professionalism of the company but also the attention to detail that they pay to even the smallest of items like the envelope. When your order is placed and shipped you will recieve an email letting you know ( I never got this due to a bug in the system but I follow them on twitter. She was very quick to highlight the problem and had it fixed before the day was out.) I'd highly recommend that ye follow her for updates and insights into the products they currently have and the new stuff they get in! There is also a sale section where you can pick up China glaze for €5. I have my eye on this at the moment- China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted set €30:

Image from beautyemporium.ie

There is also a rewards system in place where you can earn points for joining, buying and reviewing products on the site. You can then use these points in your next transaction. 50 points=€1 to spend in store and you get 1 point for every euro you spend.

Have ye ordered from the beauty emporium before? Essie are actually quite cheap there compared to boots. I will be doing more site reviews like this if ye like them. Let me know in the comments! also expect a few lipbalm posts in the coming weeks :)

**UPDATE: Ok so yesterday she decided to have another free shipping day and she got me...she got me good :P I'll do a little haul post when it arrives :) **

27 May 2012

Ah i messed up :( The challenge was actually Summer SUNRISE and I had surprise written down. sorry about that everyone! My next mani actually makes up for it which is a total coincidence but still very annoyed that I got so excited about this and did got it wrong anyway...

Challenge 6: Summer Surprise

Image from dan-dare.org

So I was initially going to go for Nails inc Victoria as my summer surprise. This is a vampy red polish that would definitely surprise people when worn during the summer. After challenge 5 I really did not want to remove Catrice Acid/dc and this is where my new friend comes in to play:

Incase you haven't seen the movie, this is the little Alien from the Toy Story movies! As acid/dc is really suited to Aliens I did a quick google search and this guy popped up and I was so annoyed that I didn't think of him before.

So if that wasn't enough of a Surprise I did a little sleuth work and discovered that Toy Story 3 was released in Ireland on July 16th 2010 so it really was a Summer Surprise.

So the entire accent nail is done using acrylic paint. I used the same colours on the black background of the accent nail to bring the mani together.

Then I noticed the other nails were looking left out...

The little alien has a purple colour that is more noticeable in real life. I thought purple tips would go nicely so I free-handed them on just using the edge of the brush. I used Catrice Plum Play with me for the purple.

I really like the comination of the blue and purple on his (I have determined that they are all boys :P ) jumpsuit so off I went to find a polish that looked similar to the acrylic paint.

I think Catrice Blue Cara ciao is almost identical to the acrylic blue. My lines aren't perfect but I just got my order of striping tape from Hong Kong so that should sort the problem in the future.

I added on a layer of Essence Quick Dry topcoat and that's all there is to it :D

26 May 2012

Today is the fifth day of the challenge and I have to say I am really loving it so far.

Challenge :Your Favourite Summer colour
I don't really have one favourite colour just for summer (although I do love me a good coral!) so I decided to go with an untried polish for today's challenge.

Catrice Acid/dc is exactly what you would expect! A gorgeous acid/lime green polish. This was recently released in Ireland with a whole load of other polishes with band names like Salmon and Garfunkel (A peach polish), Red said Fred (an orange/red polish) etc... I picked up quite a few of these polishes so I will post them as soon as I wear them :P

i love bright colours in the Summer so I knew I would have to have this polish. I love green nail polishes but generally go for darker greens.

Acid/dc is a shimmery polish although this is far more evident in the first coat than it is in the second. I think this is perfect for this polish. Too much shimmer but be a tad overbearing considering the neon-esque look of this polish.
Each picture has a layer of Stargazer 114 basecoat followed by two coats of Catrice Acid/dc. The formula on this is smooth and even. The polish itself is easy to control and the brush makes getting the curve around your cuticles easy to achieve.

I really like this polish. I like how amazing the formula on Catrice polishes is. The colour of the polish is right up my street. Eye-catching and bright but not overly neon. It looks really pretty indoors at night. The colour shifts towards a pale yellow! It's really beautiful.

Catrice did really well with this colour. It's super glossy on its own and lasted 4 days without tip-wear or a topcoat.

I am really excited about Challenge day 6 and have a pretty cute plan for my nails that day :) Hopefully it will work out :P

What is your favourite Summer colour? Also major thanks to all the lovely followers that took the time to comment yesterday. It really made my day and I want ye all to know it really was and still is much appreciated :)

25 May 2012

So today I went for something pretty simple but I think it's nice and summer appropriate :P This came about from my previous manicure HERE but I think the dots masked the true beauty of this combination.

I am in love with this like you would not believe. I knew I couldn't get away with a full orange manicure especially with the weather we've been having. Plus I am getting a tad self conscious about my nails after some recent comments on pinterest :(
This green will be perfect for St Patrick's day manicures. It is a light green creme but it does shift towards a darker forest green at night. As we are free to play with the polish on freestyle days I decided to re-do my previous mani without all the dots.

I have my usual stargazer 114 basecoat, 2 coats of Catrice Run Forest Run (green) with an accent of Nails inc Atomic also 2 coats(orange). You see how almost neon Atomic is? that is exactly how it looks in real life! Not a huge orange fan but this one is the perfect creme polish and I only paid like €6 in total for this and the other polish it came with (Nails inc OMP!).

I will definitely be wearing this combination again. Both polishes are incredibly glossy on their own. I added a coat of Essence quick dry top coat only to keep any chips from occurring before I got around to taking pictures in the light :)

The challenge is going well so far so hopefully I can keep up until the end! Completing a nail polish challenge of this length would be great to tick off the bucket list :D

23 May 2012

How are ye? I seriously can't get this song out of my head "Train-Drive by". I'm not normally a fan of this type of music but it is so catchy! Really confusing seeing as I quoted Wham!in the title but sure no harm : )

Anyway, today I have another of the polishes from the Essence New glam collection called "Toffee to Go". I love these little bottles. They look so sweet sitting on the shelf :)

Here I have 2 coats of Essence Toffee to go over a basecoat of my usual Stargazer 114. It is such a smooth polish to apply. The brush is really easy to use and the polish itself is easy to control. I didn't have any clean up to do around the edges of the nails. A major bonus point in my book.

Nude polishes are really grabbing my attention this year and I love finding new ones to try out. The polish itself is a touch pinker in real life but my camera decided that nude polish means nude and that's all I was getting :P

As per usual with Essence polishes this was €1.29 for a 5ml bottle. I am really loving the Nude glam collection so far. Essence usually have at least one polish that I like in every collection but this one seems to be an all round winner for me! We'll have to see how I feel after swatching the other 3 polishes I have...*fingers crossed*

I thought this polish would be quite close to the boots brand 17 in Forever (swatches HERE if ye missed it) but I think this polish is a proper nude polish and sides more with the human skin tone colour nude than the paint colour nude.I really hope ye understand what I'm saying there... : D

This is definitely not a match for my skin tone but then again Irish skin is very hard to match ;) I think it looks great on and I will be wearing this again. It's perfect for nail art. I have already used it in the guest post I did for Annabel from The Three Little Búhoes (INSERT link).

Are ye nude fans or would ye rather go for colourful manicures this Summer?

So far so good posting wise :) Today I coincidentally managed to complete 2 challenge's in one go!

Challenge two: Chelsea Flower Show
Challenge three:Summer dots
I got my inspiration from a picture that was on google images from another site but it just vanished when I checked this post again :( I can't find the picture now so I think they took it down.

Here we have my chelsea flower show manicure. I'm not going to lie. I hate it! I hate wearing it so much that I have an "accent hand" with only the base colours on it an avoided doing this again.

I decided on doing an accent mainly because I thought the design was a bit "too" much to wear as a full mani. So glad I did because I love the combination of the green and orange on its own. I know they aren't normally two colours that you would put together but they are so bright and work so well.

Anyway back to this "thing". I have stargazer 114 as my basecoat and 2 coats of Catrice Run forest run with and accent of Nails inc Atomic (free with Fabulous magazine around June of last year I think!) which was also 2 coats. On each nail I have alternating dots of the same colour but going in a pattern of light-dark-light-dark etc.
I used Purple,pink,green, peach, red and yellow but the yellow isn't all that visible. I created the dots using my dotting tools from ebay. I really have to work on them! it's been so long since I have dotted properly.

Purple-light:Catrice lucky in lilac,

Dark: Catrice Plum play with me

Pink-Catrice Light:Miss piggy reloaded

Dark:Catrice raspberry fields forever

Green- Light: Stargazer 101

Dark:Catrice Run forest run

Peach- Light: Catrice Salmon and Garfunkel

Dark:Barry m Peach melba

Red-Light: Miss sporty Red tango

Dark: Catrice Caught on thered Carpet

Yellow- Light: Collection 2000 Lemon fizz

Dark: Catrice Birdy reloaded

I had visions of this coming out so much better but I am glad I found a new colour combination that I like! Always a silver lining to be found :)

21 May 2012

Just a quick little post for ye today. Here is Catrice Lucky in lilac. This is my second time wearing this polish and I have to say I preferred it the first time :P No idea why but I thought it was lighter than it actually is. No harm sure, I'll use it up :)

So this is Lucky in lilac. It is a really nice creme lilac (duh!) polish but I just don't feel anything when wearing it. It's just there :P
This needs 2 coats maximum. Application was perfect! no clean up necessary.

I'm not a huge purple fan anyway but it looked so nice on other people. I don't think it suits my skin tone .

My usual basecoat of Stargazer 114 followed by 2 coats of lucky in lilac. I didn't bother with a top coat as it is fairly glossy on its own :)

20 May 2012

Today Amber from never naked nails is taking over and sharing her water marbled nails with us! Water marbling does not agree with my nails so I am really excited to see how Amber faired out. We both started blogging in and around the same time so I am so happy to have her on my blog :)
Anyway here is the post she prepared for today:

Hello lovely Cuti-Clue-Les readers! I'm Amber from Never Naked Nails and I'm here today to show you how my very first successful water marble went! I love reading this blog and she was one of my first followers=] so when she tweeted that she wanted guest posts, I thought, "Hey, I could do that.."

I have been putting off doing this for a while, simply because I was afraid I would mess it up. I had tried a water marble mani once before, and it just made my nail a mess.. so that kind of discouraged me from it. If you take a look at my blog though, you'll notice that I'm not shy to post my manis, and often am really critical of them, but I constructively criticize myself, and I'm always confident that with a little practice anything can be accomplished =]

If you want to know why I tried again, it's because I researched the CRAP out of it first. I googled, I trolled blogs, watched a couple videos..finally, I knew I was ready.

I didn't even have to question what polishes to use. In my mind, my Zoyas from the spring collection would be just perfection together!

I wanted to do a couple of things with this experiment, and one of them was to see how time consuming it would actually be. I've read it can take up to two hours of your time! In all honesty, it would've taken quite a bit longer if I had done all the nails on both hands, but I left out my pinkies and indexes. My indexes really helped me out taping and doing my right hand while my left was still drying. That was nerve-wracking enough, and actually sucked because I ended up having to redo my indexes. Yes, you read that right. I'm the girl who messes up the non-marbled nails. After all of that it took me about an hour, but would've been less if I weren't too impatient to wait for my index fingers to dry. Anyway, here is my desk, with all of my supplies after I got done:

Base coat: LA Colors, Zoya Tru, Cho and Bevin, top coat: Seche Vite

For my water, I had a half a bottle of water that I hadn't finished from work all night, and decided it would be perfect. From what I gather, you need to use filtered/bottled water free of the minerals and whatnot that comes with tap water. It also needs to be room temperature. I also have an orange wood stick, that's what I used to trace around my cuticles before I took my finger out of the water. I taped off all around my nails using three pieces of tape per finger. I found out that if you prefer to do the taping method (some people like to use cuticle oil, which I have none of & that sounds messier) then after you have all your tape on, fold it around the rest of your finger, so it doesn't get in the way and touch your other wet nails. Just be sure to leave a tab so removal is super easy!

I used my LA Colors base coat, then one layer of Zoya Cho on all my fingers. I think my not waiting for the base coat to dry causedCho to pool to one side on some nails..I could've just been moving so fast (I was excited to get to the next part!) that I gave her vertigo...

After I did my dipping and tracing, I waited about a minute before removing my tape. Just a tip: be wary of polishy water droplets! they will splatter if you are not careful when removing the tape. Not cool, water! I waited so long to put on Seche Vite. I was afraid to touch it, even with that stuff. I don't really know how long it takes to dry, but I felt safe with about ten minutes. While I waited, I did another coat of Cho on my pinkies and indexes, and then taped up my right hand (so should've done that in the beginning lol) and then continued everything on my right hand thumb, middle, and ring fingers.

My absolute favorite thing from this mani has to be my left ring finger. I was surprised with how cool it turned out! Tru blends right on in with Cho and Bevin as my tip so perfectly, it looks like I did it on purpose. I tried to make a blurry photo, so that you could tell thatTru kept her shimmer through the marble process =]

My right is a bit more awkward, you can tell the purple in Tru is more washed out, and I think that has to do with not tracing around my finger fast enough, but I was just trying to be careful! I need more practice, but I think I have promise =]

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks to Cuti-Clue-Les for having me =]

Thanks so much Amber! It turned out so well :O I love the base colour you used. I'll have to try water marbling again in the future. I love the end result! Good tip about researching on other blogs etc... that's pretty much what I do when trying new techniques out. It really does help!

If anyone would like to guest post them just email me at cuticlueless@gmail.com or tweet me @Cuti-CLUE-les.

19 May 2012

Today is the start of my first ever challenge! I joined "The Purple Crumpet Fairy Summer Challenge" ages ago and then promptly decided it was too much for me. But then I made a list of each challenge and drew up a load of ideas of what I could do for each and it made it a lot easier to take on :)

Challenge number one: Olympic Torch Starts it's journey
Now I am not a fan of the Olympics but I said I'd give it a go :P I used the torch itself as inspiration and I have the perfect gold to compliment it.

Catrice Goldfinger is such an amazing polish. This is my first time wearing it and let me tell you this bottle will not last long :P
This is from Catrice's discontinued line and I really don't see why they stopped making this one.
I originally bought this as a replacement for Essence (32) Goldrush which is also discontinued : / I always come late to the party : ( I prefer this to gold rush. It is more like a foil and it looks stunning in the sun.

This polish has a foil like finish. In the pictures I have one layer of Stargazer 114 basecoat and 2 coats of Catrice Goldfinger. The polish was actually quite easy to apply with barely any clean up needed afterwards.

Gold polishes were never really my thing. They used to be so tacky looking and were always made to be over the top and slightly garish. I'm really glad they made a more sophisticated gold that you can wear both day and night.

Catrice retail for €2.79 but because this was being discontinued I got it for €1.50.
The brush is the "old" version which is slightly longer but it is a synch to apply and if you can find it you won't have any problems with application.

Catrice polishes dry amazingly quickly so you can throw on two coats and be ready to go in no time!